Maths Heaven Ltd was a concept developed as an academic project and no longer offers online tuition.

Please email zoe@mathsheaven.co.uk with queries.

1. What is Maths Heaven?
Maths Heaven was originally conceived in 2011 as a prototype online private tuition service. This was back in the olden days when broadband was still a bit slow and we all had MySpace accounts.

The concept of Maths Heaven was that you could sign up for weekly individual online tuition sessions that help build your confidence and help you catch up at school; a personalised programme of lessons to prepare for a specific qualification (such as GCSE Maths or Adult Numeracy), or you could just book a single session to address a specific question or topic.

At that time, little did I know that online tuition would come into its own in 2020 during the Covid-19 lockdowns. I was perfectly placed to be able to offer online tuition with supporting resources, videos and help for my colleagues to tackle the new software and hardware challenges.

I still use a Bamboo Wacom graphics tablet to create and share videos of myself outlining maths concepts (asynchronously) and I find that it’s much quicker to produce a quick vid than to keep repeating myself in class or trying to find resources that exactly fit my requirements. Not to mention, students really appreciate being able to recap a topic in the same way that they first covered it, and they can pause, recap and test themselves all within the same 10 minute video. In class, my time can be spent better in tackling the sticky examples or the students who might need more support.

Since w e have mostly returned to in-person teaching (now that covid has been stamped out completely and will, of course, NEVER return) it’s been tempting for many of my colleagues to revert back to all manual worksheets and activities that rely on teachers being in the room. It’s baby-out-with-the-bathwater stuff – I think that we need to keep as many of the good bits of digital teaching and learning as we can, because it’s not without value. Many of our students (especially the quieter ones) can get much more value from asynchronous tuition than they can from a single teacher who might have 29 other attention seekers in the room. Digital teaching is a tool that improves accessibility, so let’s keep it in the teaching toolbox along with the textbook, the chalkboard, the mini whiteboards, the stick and the carrot.